Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Preaching, Homiletics & Scripture

  • The Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I have good news for you, and I want you to drill it into your very soul.  I want you to take it with you all through the coming week and beyond.  I want you to share it with every person who is important to you, no, even to every person God puts in your path.  That news is this: God is in charge.

    And thank God for that!  Look at the mess our governments, Church, and communities are in.  Scandals, mismanagement, all of those can cause us to lose confidence that anything is the way it’s supposed to be.  But, thankfully, God is in charge, and nothing can go so wrong that God can’t fix it.  We see that in the readings today.  In our first reading, the prophet Jeremiah finds himself being vexed by those who would rather not hear his message.  They seek to tempt and denounce him, hoping that will cause him to fall and do something they can use against him.  But it doesn’t work.  He turns to the Lord, the Lord hears his cry and delivers him from their hands.  And this causes him to sing God’s praise:

    Sing to the LORD,
    praise the LORD,
    for he has rescued the life of the poor
    from the power of the wicked!

    In the second reading, Paul recounts the fall of humanity through the sin of Adam.  Through that sin, death entered the world and sin and death reigned, until Jesus smashed their power through his own death and resurrection.  Saint Paul emphasizes that the Paschal mystery has turned everything upside-down, in a good way:

    For if by the transgression of the one the many died,
    how much more did the grace of God
    and the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ
    overflow for the many.

    Finally, in our Gospel reading, Jesus himself speaks directly to our hearts.  Even though we may be going through hell, even when it seems like everyone is working against us, we are to “Fear no one.”  Why?  Because God knows us completely: he has gone so far as to number the hairs on our head, so nothing of value in us can ultimately be destroyed.  And so we should not be afraid of “those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.”

    So I want you to take three things with you into the week ahead.  The first is do not be afraid.  Jesus says this three times in the Gospel reading today, so with that much repetition, we really ought to take notice.  Sin and death are ultimately powerless over us, so we should not be afraid.  Instead, we ought to go forth and follow our calling, live our vocation, and seek to maintain a holy way of life.  That will ensure that we remain on the path to the reward in store for us.

    Second, remember that God is in charge.  Not anyone else, not us, not our friends or enemies, not sin or death, not any passing thing or human entity.  Ultimately, it is only God who is in charge, and because of that, we have to know that everything will eventually work for our good and the good of all.  Evil can’t have the day because it’s already been defeated by the death and resurrection of Our Lord.  God is always in charge.

    Finally, perhaps most importantly, remember that you are loved.  God is love and because of that, God cannot not love.  He loves you more than you can possibly imagine.  He loves you despite your failings, calling you to a better life.  He loves you even when everyone else seems to be turning away.  He loves you on your good days and on your bad days.  His love is the constant in all of our lives, and the one thing that, even if everything else fails, should get us out of bed in the morning. 

    So do not be afraid.  You are worth more than many sparrows.  God loves you more than anything, and he is absolutely in charge of everything.

  • Friday of the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    It amazes me when I think about all that the early Church had to go through and put up with. Saint Paul writes that he put up with persecution from all sides: from his own people as well as the Gentiles. He was beaten often, endured hazardous journeys and perilous weather, as well as every kind of deprivation. His experience was definitely extreme, but others who lived the faith in those days were also subject to persecution, torture and death. Our experience isn’t quite like that, is it? I mean, here we sit in this comfortable and safe church. We came here freely to Mass this morning and it is unlikely that anyone will openly persecute us or torture us or put us to death for worshipping our God, although of course, it does happen occasionally in some parts of the world.

    But there is a subtle kind of persecution that we often must endure. We know that even if our society is not openly hostile to living the Gospel, it might be just one step short of that. Life is not respected in our society: babies are aborted, the elderly are not respected or given adequate care, children are not raised in nurturing families, people are hated because of their race, color or creed. Faith is ridiculed as the crutch of the weak. Hope is crushed by those who abuse power. Love is diminished by the world’s shabby standards of loving. Living the Gospel is costly to anyone who would want to be taken seriously in our culture.

    To all of us who come to this holy place to worship this morning and who hope to work out our salvation by living the Gospel, Saint Paul speaks eloquently. We know that he, as well as all of the communion of saints, is there to intercede for us and show us the way. He says to us today, “Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is led to sin, and I am not indignant?” He points us to our Lord Jesus who paid the ultimate price for the Gospel, and reminds us of what our Gospel proclaims to us today: that in living that Gospel, regardless of its cost, we store up for ourselves incredible treasures in heaven, because it is in heaven that our heart resides.

  • Tuesday of the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Gospel is one that’s certainly very familiar to us.  But if we’re honest, every time we hear it, it must give us a little bit of uneasiness, right?  Because, yes, it is very easy to love those who love us, to do good to those who do good to us, to greet those who greet us.  But when it comes right down to it, Jesus is right.  There is nothing special about loving those we know well, and we certainly look forward to greeting our friends and close family.

    However that’s not what the Christian life is about.  We know that, but when we get a challenge like today’s Gospel, it hits a little close to home.  Because we all know people we’d rather not show kindness to, don’t we?  We all have that mental list of people who are annoying or who have wronged us or caused us pain.  And to have to greet them, do good to them, even love them – well that all seems too much some days.

    And yet that is what disciples do.  We’re held to a higher standard than those proverbial tax collectors and pagans that Jesus refers to.  We are people of the new covenant, people redeemed by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  And so we have to live as if we have been freed from our pettiness, because, in fact, we have.  We are told to be perfect, as our heavenly Father is perfect.  It’s a tall order, but a simple act of kindness to one person we’d rather not be kind to is all it takes to make a step closer.

  • The Eleventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Eleventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Think back.  When you were growing up, in your faith formation, did you get the idea that somehow you had to behave yourself in order to win God’s love and grace?  I think that’s a common thing that people come to after a life of somewhat inadequate faith formation.  We got the idea that, if we wanted God to love us, then we had to behave in the right ways and follow all the rules.  And some of that comes from our human experience.  Many people often consume their lives with trying to win the approval of others, and so God is just an extension of that.  But we have it all backwards: God is not like that, and that’s what today’s Liturgy of the Word is trying to tell us.  The Scriptures show us a God who loves us first, and then calls on us to respond to God’s love by living the right way.  Our entire lives should be all about responding in love to the love God has for all of us.

    The first reading today recalls how God led the people Israel through the desert for forty years, bringing them safely to the land he promised on oath to their ancestors.  Traditionally this has been viewed literally, but there is also a tradition that sees the whole rescue of the Hebrew people from the tyranny of Egypt allegorically.  Many of the Church fathers see the rescue as our own rescue from the tyranny and slavery of sin, through the wilderness of the world, into the safe haven of God’s promise.  So whether we want to read this first reading literally today, or whether we want to see it as our delivery from sin, in either case, we see the Lord’s providence and kindness poured out on his people, delivering them from danger and bringing them safely into a land that had always been promised to them.

    For our second reading these coming weeks, we will be reading from Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans, arguably one of the masterpieces of his, or anyone else’s, theological writing.  Today’s reading is somewhat the crux of his presentation in Romans: God in his mercy chose to save us even though we were not worthy of it: we were still sinners.  We had been enemies of God through the power sin and death had over us, but God in his goodness chose to redeem us anyway.  Having been reconciled, he now chooses in his kindness to save us from the power of death and bring us in to the grace and peace of his kingdom for all eternity.  This is all done through the grace and kindness of our God, who chooses to save us even though we are not remotely worthy of it on our own.

    The Gospel reading, though, presents us with the greatest personification of God’s kindness.  Throughout chapter nine of Matthew’s Gospel, we see the crowds hanging on Jesus’ words and deeds.  In this chapter, Jesus heals a paralytic, he calls Matthew – a tax collector and a sinner – to follow him, he raises the daughter of a local government official from the dead, he heals two blind men, and expels a demon.  The crowds were understandably entranced by his words and deeds, and Jesus can see that they are entranced because they had so long gone without any kind of adequate pastoral care.  The religious officials who should have been bringing them the good news of God’s kindness had instead been about the business of extracting the minutiae of the Law and filling their own coffers.  They had left the people abandoned of God, like sheep without a shepherd, and Jesus’ heart ached for them.  So in his kindness, he sends out the Twelve to continue his work and to call more and more people to come to know that the kingdom was at hand, and repentance would give them a place in that kingdom.

    So these readings have been a great rehearsal of the kindness of God as the Scriptures present it.  God created us in love, redeemed us from the grasp of sin and death, and gives us a place in his heavenly kingdom – all of this without our being worthy of any of it.  And that’s nice, but the Scriptures would be remiss if they stopped there.  Instead, they go on to prescribe the proper response to God’s love and kindness, and each of today’s readings give us a way to do that.  These readings call us to keep the covenant, to boast of God and to freely give.

    In the first reading, God makes the first move in favor of establishing a covenant.  He didn’t have to – clearly.  He had made us in love, but we had turned away from him, and not just once.  Yet, he was the one who sent Moses to lead the people out of the slavery of Egypt so that they could inherit the land he promised on oath to their ancestors.  If God has reached out that far to us, we can do no less than keep the covenant.  We have to live the life of grace: keep the commandments, love God and neighbor, show God’s love in everything we do.  We have to reach out to the marginalized and needy, just as God reached out to us in our own need.  “If you hearken to my voice and keep my covenant,” God says to the Israelites and to us, “you shall be my special possession, dearer to me than all other people.”

    In the second reading, Saint Paul echoes what the first reading says.  God has made the first move.  He reconciled us while we were still sinners.  He gave us the way to the kingdom.  We didn’t deserve it, but our sinfulness is no match for God’s mercy.  So if God has been so merciful, we need to boast about it.  And we’re not to boast about it as if it was something we earned or accomplished on our own; we are to “boast of God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”

    And finally, in the Gospel, Jesus gives us the key to our response to God’s love, mercy and kindness: “Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.”  The gifts of grace are never given to us just for ourselves.  They are given to us to share.  Now that we have been redeemed and blessed, we must turn and bless others, leading them to the redemption God longs to pour out on them.  We are to freely give of the rich store of grace that has been freely given to us.

    God does not manipulate us for his pleasure.  He does not demand that we behave perfectly in order to receive his kindness, grace, and love.  Instead, he is the one who washes our feet, who stretches out his arms on the Cross, who dies that we may live.  In the face of such great and perfect love, we can do no less than love in return.

  • The Immaculate Heart of Mary

    The Immaculate Heart of Mary

    Today’s Gospel story is a fitting one, I think, for this celebration of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  The evangelist tells us that Mary’s heart was filled with wonder.  There are a few stories in the Gospels that end with that wonderful line: “and his mother kept all these things in her heart.”  I think the moms here can understand the sentiment of these lines.  I think any mother is amazed at the things their children learn to do, but Mary’s wonderment goes beyond even that: she is amazed at the coming of age of Jesus Christ as the Son of God.  She knew her child would be special, and when you read these stories you can just imagine how astounded she is at times.  Her heart was filled with wonder.

    At other places in the Gospel, I imagine her heart is filled with fear.  She began to see, I am sure, that the wonderful things her son was doing were not universally appreciated.  She must have known that the authorities were displeased and were plotting against him.  She probably worried that he would be in danger, which of course he was.  Her heart was filled with fear.

    Toward the end of the Gospel, her heart is certainly filled with sorrow.  As she stood at the foot of the cross, her son, the love of her life, is put to death.  The Stabat Materhymn calls that well to mind: “At the cross her station keeping, stood the mournful mother weeping, close to Jesus at the last.”  The prophet Simeon had foretold her sorrow when she and Joseph presented Jesus in the temple.  Her heart was filled with sorrow.

    At the end of the Gospel, her heart must have been filled with joy.  Jesus’ death was not the end of the story.  Not only did his life not end at the grave, now the power of the grave is smashed to oblivion by the power of the resurrection.  In those first hours after his resurrection, she shared the joy of the other women and the disciples.  Her heart was filled with joy.

    And as the community went forward in the book of Acts to preach the Good News and to make the Gospel known to every corner of the world, Mary’s heart was filled with love.  That love that she had for her son, that love that she received from God, she now shared as the first of the disciples.  Her place in the community was an honored one, but one that she took up with great passion.  Her heart was filled with love.

    For us, perhaps, the best news is that, through it all, her heart was always filled with faith. That faith allowed her to respond to God’s call through the angel Gabriel with fiat: “let it be done to me according to your word.” Because of Mary’s faith, the unfolding of God’s plan for the salvation of every person came to fruition. We are here this morning, to some extent because of her faith, that faith that allowed her to experience the wonder, sustained her through fear and sorrow, and brought life to the joy and love she experienced. She kept all these things in her heart, that heart that was always filled with faith.

  • The Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

    The Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

    We’ve all heard the teaching that God is love.  And that’s a good thing to remember: I tell our school students they should always remember that, and if they do, they’ll know quite a bit about our God.  God is love in its purest form, so pure in fact that it burns away all our imperfections and makes us new people, washed clean in the Blood of Christ.  True love wills the good of the other for the sake of the other, and God models that best by having sent His only Son to live our life and die our death and raise us to new life with him forever.

    Today, the word “love” is tossed about in all sorts of ways.  Love can be construed as lust, or even affection, and real love isn’t any of that.  The popular saying is that “love is love,” and nothing could be further from the truth.  Real love isn’t bound by agendas, selfishness, or pride, and it is hard, no impossible, for us to avoid those things given our fallen human nature.  But, if we let Him, if we get out of his way, God will fill us with his grace, and give us love emanating from the Sacred Heart of Jesus that will fill our lives with love beyond measure.

    And let’s be clear: God loved us first and loves us best.  He loved us into creation and sustains us in his love.  Because God is love, he cannot not love.  But our agendas, selfishness, and pride can certainly get in the way, and now is the time to root all of that out because our world, our communities, our families, our churches need our love.  Everyone needs to see the Sacred Heart burning in us, because this world, left to its own crime, sin and blasphemy, is way too sad without it.

    We are all broken and hurting and in pain, spiritually. We might ignore it, or offer it up, or worst of all, might try to mask it with alcohol or other addictions. But none of that really heals us. The only thing that really heals is the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.  The same is true for our broken world.

    We don’t trust God as much as we should; we don’t let God love us as much as we should. We want to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, take care of number one all by ourselves. Pope Francis says that God never gets tired of showing us mercy, it’s we who get tired of asking. And that’s so wrong. We weren’t made for that. We were made to be cared for and to be loved so that we can take care of others and love them in the name of Christ.

    God’s love is awesome. It doesn’t just cover our sins, it wipes them out, obliterates them so that they aren’t who we are any more. In the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we find a love that is so pure and so powerful that it cannot be overshadowed by any kind of darkness, nor be snuffed out even by the grave.

    But we absolutely have to let him love us, or we will miss it every time.

    Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.

  • Thursday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    It’s always scary when Jesus starts out saying “you have heard it said that…” because he always follows up with “but what I say to you is this…” What he is doing here, though, is freeing us from the strictness of the law and opening our eyes to its spirit. So in Christ, it’s not enough just not to murder, we must also respect life in every way. We can’t just be content with not murdering or aborting, although that’s certainly a good start, but we must also be sure to tear down any kind of racism, hatred, or stereotyping; even refusal to forgive someone. We must care for the elderly and sick and never let them be forgotten. We must never be so angry that we write people off and hold grudges. Murdering takes many forms, brothers and sisters, and we must be careful to avoid them all or be held liable for breaking the fifth commandment in spirit.

    We should shine the light of God’s spirit on all of our laws and commandments and be certain that we are following them as God intended. As St. Paul said in today’s first reading, “For God who said, Let light shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to bring to light the knowledge of the glory of God on the face of Jesus Christ.” May we all be free to follow the spirit of God’s law and be transformed from glory into glory.

  • Saint Anthony of Padua, Priest and Doctor of the Church

    Saint Anthony of Padua, Priest and Doctor of the Church

    Today’s readings

    I think I can always remember my mother, and my grandmothers, praying to St. Anthony anytime something was lost. There’s even the popular little prayer, “Tony, Tony, look around, something’s lost and must be found.” This everyday need to find lost objects has made St. Anthony one of the most popular saints.

    But the real story of St. Anthony meshes very well with the challenge of today’s Gospel reading, that we would be salt and light for the earth.  The gospel call to leave everything and follow Christ was the rule of Anthony’s life. Over and over again God called him to something new in his plan. Every time Anthony responded with renewed zeal and self-sacrificing to serve his Lord Jesus more completely. His journey as the servant of God began as a very young man when he decided to join the Augustinians, giving up a future of wealth and power to follow God’s plan for his life. Later, when the bodies of the first Franciscan martyrs went through the Portuguese city where he was stationed, he was again filled with an intense longing to be one of those closest to Jesus himself: those who die for the Good News.

    So Anthony entered the Franciscan Order and set out to preach to the Moors – a pretty dangerous thing to do. But an illness prevented him from achieving that goal. He went to Italy and was stationed in a small hermitage where he spent most of his time praying, reading the Scriptures and doing menial tasks.

    But that was not the end for Anthony’s dream of following God’s call. Recognized as a great man of prayer and a great Scripture and theology scholar, Anthony became the first friar to teach theology to the other friars. Soon he was called from that post to preach to heretics, to use his profound knowledge of Scripture and theology to convert and reassure those who had been misled.

    Through the intercession and example of St. Anthony, may we all find the courage to be salt and light for a world that has in many ways grown bland and dark. Following our own call to holiness, we can help people find Christ, as Saint Anthony always longed to do.

  • The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)

    The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)

    Today’s readings

    If you’ve ever travelled abroad, to a country where English is not the spoken language, maybe you’ve had this experience.  I travelled to Mexico when I was in seminary to learn Spanish.  The first day I was there, we went to Mass at the local Cathedral.  Even though at that point my Spanish was pretty sketchy, especially on that first day, still I recognized the Mass.  That’s because we celebrate it in the same way, with the same words – albeit in a different language – everywhere on earth.  In the Eucharist, we are one.  “Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.”  That’s what St. Paul tells the Corinthians today, and we are meant to hear it as well.  We are called to unity with one another as we gather around the Altar to partake of the one Body of Christ.

    We flounder, sometimes, in showing our unity.  We want so much to say that we are one that we think we have to invent ways to do it.  And sure, we do some things together.  We all sing the same songs.  We all stand or sit together.  We might all join hands at the Lord’s Prayer.  And those are all okay things, but they are not what unites us.  They put us on a somewhat equal footing, but that can happen in all kinds of gatherings.  The one thing that unites us at this gathering, the experience we have here that we don’t have in any other situation, is the Eucharist.  The Eucharist unites us in the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, where all division must necessarily cease. 

    Having said that, there are obvious ways in which we can notice that we are not, in fact, one.  The Eucharist, which is the celebration of our unity, can often remind us in a very stark and disheartening way, of the ways that we remain divided with our brothers and sisters in Christ.  The most obvious of these ways is the way that we Catholics remain divided with our Protestant brothers and sisters, and in fact, they with each other as well.  The proliferation of Christian denominations is something we can soft-pedal as “different strokes for different folks,” but is in fact a rather sad reminder that the Church that Jesus founded and intended to be one is in fact fragmented in ways that it seems can only be overcome by a miracle.  In our Creed we profess a Church that is “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.”  By “catholic” here, we may indeed mean “universal” but that does not, of course, mean that we are in fact one.

    Another thing that divides all of us from one another is sin.  Mortal sin separates us not only from God, not only from those we have wronged, but also from the Church and all of our brothers and sisters in Christ.  When we have sinned greatly, we are not permitted in good conscience to receive the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, because we cannot dare to pretend to be one with those from whom we have separated ourselves, through mortal sin.

    I think this point is very notable at this point in our human history.  There is so much going on that is caused by personal and societal sin, and that sin does indeed separate us.  There is the sin of racism.  There is the sin of disrespect for human life, including abortion, violence in our cities, disrespect for religion, properly formed conscience, and family.  There is the sin of fomenting and thriving on disagreement, especially in politics.  Jesus prayed on the last day of his life on earth that we would all be one, and yet, throughout history, and even to this very day, we continue to find occasions to separate ourselves from one another, to proliferate division in thought, word and deed.  We who receive the Eucharist, the sacrament of unity, need to be the catalysts for that very unity, to root out every vestige of racism in our own hearts, and stand with our brothers and sisters.  We can’t just stand by and say, well, I’m not racist or I never had an abortion, so I don’t have to deal with that.  We have to be the ones who say it’s not okay, and seek reconciliation with every single person.  If we don’t, we’re mocking the Eucharist, and I think we all know that’s not okay.

    “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him,” Jesus says to us today.  When we remain in him, we also remain united to one another through Christ.  This is what God wants for his Church, so today we must recommit ourselves to unity, real unity.  So if you have not been to Confession in a while, make it a priority to do that in the next week or so that you can be one with us at the Table of the Lord.  And at Communion today, we must all make it our prayer that the many things that divide us might soon melt away so that we can all become one in the real way the Jesus meant for us.

    “I am the living bread that came down from heaven;
    whoever eats this bread will live forever;
    and the bread that I will give
    is my flesh for the life of the world.”

    Our bishops have called for a National Eucharistic Revival, and this year, beginning today, is the year of the Parish.  So we must make it our priority, beginning this year, to recommit ourselves to the unity that is brought about by the Holy Eucharist, and live that unity so that all will come to know the source of our oneness, in Jesus Christ.  On this feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, we pray that every person may one day come to share in the flesh of our Savior, given for the life of the world, and we pray that his great desire might come to pass: that we may be one.

    Because the loaf of bread is one,
    we, though many, are one body,
    for we all partake of the one loaf.

  • Saturday of the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    A king’s secret it is prudent to keep,
    but the works of God are to be made known with due honor.

    Today we hear the end of the story we have been reflecting on all week.  Tobit and Tobiah’s family fortune has been restored; Sarah’s sadness from her seven previous husbands dying on their wedding night has been turned into joy when she was given in marriage to Tobit.  And finally, in yesterday’s first reading, Tobit helps heal his father’s blindness, and Tobiah sings in praise to God.  It’s an almost uncharacteristically happy ending for a book of the Old Testament!

    But happiness, real happiness, eternal happiness, that is the purpose of the Scriptures.  That happiness comes finally from the resurrection of Our Lord which opens to us the way to salvation.  Just as Tobiah and Sarah were saved from their ailments, so we are saved from the ailments of sin and death by the death and resurrection of Christ.  The happy ending of the book of Tobit foreshadows the happy ending of the life of grace which we receive by following our Risen Lord.

    But, as the archangel Raphael makes clear twice in today’s first reading, this happiness is not to be a well-guarded secret.  Some things are best kept secret, sure, but not salvation, not the works of God.  So we have to be disciples who live as saved people and tell everyone the reason for our happiness.  Others need to see our joy so they can experience it too.

    A king’s secret it is prudent to keep,
    but the works of God are to be made known with due honor.